Tips from Worlds That You Can Use in Any ELO
Guides

4 Nov 16

Guides

Trumpis, contributors

Trumpis

Tips from Worlds That You Can Use in Any ELO

How you can improve your play, thanks to the LoL Worlds Tournament.

Every year, the Worlds tournament for League of Legends delivers the greatest display of League of Legends skill worldwide. With the tournament, the greatest teams from all the regions of the planet come together to celebrate the game and determine which team is the greatest. These are the best players in the world taking on one another to see who is top dog, and the strategies and mechanical skills of these players is nearly unmatched. However, this does not mean that what they do is too foreign for the common audience. After all, it is the same League of Legends that you or I log onto on an almost daily basis, so couldn't we try and take some things from the pros to use for ourselves? Learning from the best and replicating what they do can lead to success, but it can also lead to failure (Miss Fortune's win rating went down by almost 5% after her support powers were debuted in the semi-finals). So, what tips should you try and take from Worlds this year?

Well champion picks are not necessarily the best move (again, see the MF statistic above), but some of the more long-term ideas are optimal to try and replicate. Everyone has a different style and not everyone plays to win all their games, but improving minor details can over time make all the difference. Some of the things you can change to improve your game include your champion pool, the way you pick your champion, how you approach objectives and kills, and most importantly, how you view your situation as a whole. While this might not be the mechanical big show highlight reel making plays guide you were looking for, everyone has to start somewhere. Remember, even Faker and Bengi had to learn how to play this game at one point.


(Image Courtesy of: lolesports)

Having an Efficient Champion Pool

I don't want to delve into this topic too much, just because there have been so many articles and forum posts on this topic. It's important and most people know it, to have a champion pool that is large enough to counter everything that is thrown your way, but being small enough to develop your skills on certain champions to a greater level. However, the difference between Worlds and casual play is the players at Worlds only (with few exceptions) play one role throughout the tournament. So not only having a champion pool, but a role-specific champion pool blueprint. While you should be confident in more than one role, every player has their place, and refining your champion pool in that specific position can make a ton of a difference.

As an example from Worlds, let's look at the Russian breakout star, ANX's support player Likkrit. Likkrit and his team came into Worlds rather unknown, and were expected to lose to the number one seeded team from the number one region, the ROX Tigers, in their best of one matchup. The ROX tigers knew Likkrit was a star player, and banned not one, not two, but three supports. 100% of the Korean squad's bans were all support champions Likkrit had played in the past and done well on. They expected him to just pick something that he was unfamiliar to and they could force down the bot lane. However, Likkrit locked in Taric and went onto the Rift. This game of course, became history, as a wildcard team beat a Korean team, a wildcard team moved onto the Worlds Quarterfinals, and most importantly, a Wildcard team looked like a team that could actually match the pace of the rest of the competition. But it was Likkrit's Taric that allowed that to happen. He did it by not collapsing due to the targeted bans, playing the champion well in teamfights, roaming when necessary (sure dropping some kills for ROX occasionally), and actually being the one to destroy the nexus. While I'm not saying a specific four champion banning pool is necessary, being ready for anything with your pool is. Likkrit knew that and led his team to an unpredictable victory because of it.

(Image Courtesy of: lolesports)

A Balance Between Studying the Meta and Having Comfort Picks

Okay, again with the champion pools. However you slice it they are important, but sometimes it’s who you put into them that is the real difference. At Worlds this year, we saw a much more meta-bound champion pool overall, with less than half the available champions seeing any play, and only a small fraction seeing regular attention through picks or bans. However, some of the more important picks that got attention were either picks that were summoner favorites or seemingly unconventional picks that could only have been schemed up by those who live, eat, and breath League of Legends. So which is better, to study and read the meta, and know that certain champions will carry you to victory despite lack of experience, or play comfort picks or unconventional picks and become so well versed in those champions you can thrive despite the nerf and buff lottery that can occur? The verdict can be supported by either side, but knowing what champions are powerful is extremely potent knowledge, especially in ranked matches. The verdict I would give here is have a definitive champion pool, but don't be afraid to experiment and pay attention to who is in the spotlight, and maybe leave a spot in your pools for what is the top of the meta food chain.

The argument for the comfort picks can be provided by Samsung Galaxy's CoreJJ picking Zyra support. This was something he had played a numerous amount of times before, but not for a fair amount of time and it wasn’t something that was a target for any bans or even speculation from enemy teams. He not only pulled out a great performance with it but also pulled out a great game and a win for Samsung Galaxy over Royal Never Give Up. He pulled it out 4 more times throughout the championship, and only lost on it once against SKT Telecom T1 in game one of the finals, but then used it to beat them in the insane comeback game that was game 3. So it proved to be very useful for CoreJJ to use a pick that had no real international threat that he was comfortable on.

On the other hand, you have the ROX Tiger's Peanut, who was arguably one of the top junglers of the tournament. His key picks were banned against him in the quarterfinals match against EDG when they were up 2 games to 1 after 3 straight Lee Sin games. He decided to play Olaf, a common meta pick and a very strong champion during this period of Worlds. This would be seemingly normal except that he had never played Olaf in a professional game before then. He was in a match point game in the World's quarterfinals, and decided that this champion was strong and simple enough to attempt to play at this stage in the tournament. Peanut then proceeded to get a triple kill at the start of the game and bring his team to the semifinals. While it is unclear if Peanut had been practicing on Olaf in scrimmages against other teams, he had no professional games on any stage with Olaf and then pulled it out on the largest stage he could.


(Image Courtesy of: lolesports)

Never Give Up

This lesson, while the simplest in explaining, might be the hardest to implement in game out of all the ones discussed. Why is that? Well simply because not giving up is more than hitting 'no' on that surrender vote. It's keeping that mental fortitude throughout the duration of the game and always planning on how you are going to win the game despite being behind in resources. Some matches it is easier than others. When the enemy team got a one tower advantage and took Baron, all coming back requires is not getting in teamfights with the enemy team and trying to hold of their lane push. But the larger the deficit becomes, the harder coming back from the deficit is. The more objectives will be needed, the more kills you need to hold off and finally the more time you will need to play defensively.

Take your pick of Worlds games to analyze for this example, but there is one game that is the epitome of the comeback. Game 3 of the Finals pitted Samsung Galaxy versus SKT Telecom T1, and the previous statistics were in favor of SKT sweeping Samsung without even needing to exert too much effort. 30 minutes into the third game, these predictions would've seemed accurate, and then Samsung made one last play that ended up almost costing SKT the series. Samsung decided to turn the game around by going for the Baron buff and having all four elemental dragons allowed them to know that Elder Dragon priority could easily turn the game around despite a several thousand-gold deficit. They took Baron and then stole the Elder Dragon, only fighting when necessary and led themselves, SKT and all the viewers on the arguably the craziest game and definitely the longest game of the entire tournament. That led to Samsung Galaxy winning that game and the following one, only losing to SKT in the fifth and final game, when it looked like SKT was going to have their second 3-0 title win of their career. It's determination and knowing personal strengths that can lead any team, despite the odds, to a victory.

I hope you guys found this piece intriguing and helpful for your future games and endeavors in League, and maybe the next time you guys watch a pro League event, take some notes on what your favorite pros and teams do and try and replicate their success! If you guys have any questions or simply want to talk League, you can find me @Buns_and_roses on twitter, and I will see you on the Rift!

Get your own AKRacing Chair here and support our players, all profit goes towards the teams!

Related articles